Critic's notebook: Albany High theater explores being a woman

A portion of the poster for the new student-written work "Hers," being performed at Albany High School this weekend. (Provided photo.)

A portion of the poster for the new student-written work "Hers," being performed at Albany High School this weekend. (Provided photo.)

Photo: Provided Photo, Albany High School Theater Ensemble

Photo: Provided Photo, Albany High School Theater Ensemble

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A portion of the poster for the new student-written work "Hers," being performed at Albany High School this weekend. (Provided photo.)

A portion of the poster for the new student-written work "Hers," being performed at Albany High School this weekend. (Provided photo.)

Photo: Provided Photo, Albany High School Theater Ensemble

Critic's notebook: Albany High theater explores being a woman

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ALBANY – Raw, unalloyed emotion explodes from the 30 teens in "Hers," a student-written work being performed this weekend by the Albany High School Theater Ensemble. This is theater as teaching tool, artistic expression and catharsis, for the performers and their audience, and it is often deeply moving to experience.

That's the right word for it, experience. You don't simply watch "Hers." Crafted into a theatrical piece by director Noelle Gentile, student director Jaidyn Hires and nine editors from dozens of short monologues and scenes written over nine months during this school year, "Hers" is a counterpart of sorts to the theater ensemble's student-written production last year, "Blaq Boi," which examined stereotypes of black men.

With an emotional intelligence that is at once precocious and fearless, the students who created "Hers" wade right into the roiling waters of what it means to a young woman today, from societal expectation to sexual violence, gender norms to body issues. They also address sexuality in ways that, while frank, feel age- and venue-appropriate. Attraction, infatuation, sex and love are part of these young people's lives, and it is deeply gratifying to see a school allow them the freedom, with adult guidance, to explore and dramatize. This is not yet another high school production of "Our Town" or "Oklahoma," in other words, so leave the little siblings at home. Anybody younger than, say, 11, has no place in the audience for "Hers." But there's surely a place for an audience beyond the school community and families of the cast and creative team. It may at times be uncomfortable to hear what they have say, to be faced with dozens of teens demanding respect for their experiences and their views, to which they'd say this: Too bad. Deal with it.

The second act starts with a breakdown of the difference between how white-dominated American culture sees women overall versus its expectations of "black girls." This is the sort of astute cultural commentary that, further vitalized by a compelling performer, wins poetry slams or monologue contests or informs a trenchant comedian's act. In the most heartbreaking moment of the show, a lone teen strums a ukulele, her pretty voice carrying a simple melody while the lyrics describe a young man raping his little sister. And in a scene that shows how ill-equipped our language is to deal with complexities of gender identity and expression, two performers stand facing each other and saying, "This is what a girl looks like." But here's the thing: Traditional words and designations would say one of them looks like a girlish boy, the other like a boyish girl, and yet neither of those descriptions is anywhere near accurate enough to convey how these individuals see themselves and experience the world. Contemporary understanding and language haven't caught up yet with what we know to be the larger truths they embody.

It is a testament to the respect earned over years by the theater program at Albany High that the administration not only allows but embraces use of the dramatic arts to create nonclassroom educational opportunities like "Hers." In times past in our region, and probably even still today elsewhere, "Hers" would be denounced as shocking, or at least be tongue-cluckingly dismissed as "inappropriate." I can think of nothing more appropriate than the way "Hers" continues, as Hamlet first put it more than 400 years ago, the theater's tradition of holding a mirror up to our nature.